Number One and Eleven

I spent the first half of the week in Porto-Novo with all my stuff packed up. We had a crazy experience on Wednesday. The tenth of January is the biggest Voodoo holiday and the country that practices the most Voodoo in the world is Benin and the place where they have their festivals is in Porto-Novo, the capital. So, we got all ready to go see the Voodoo festival where people stab themselves with knives and don’t get hurt and do a lot of dances very similar to the chicken dance. Anyway, we got to the place to wait with a family that had a brother with a car who would take us. We got there at 7 and waited forever. When he finally showed up at 10:30 we were mad. And then he didn’t have enough places in his car for us four because he already picked up two other people. And because we can’t take motorcycles here he decided to go to the festival drop the two off and come right back. As he left the family said after all these inconveniences God probably doesn’t want us to go, something bad would come to us. Beninese are a very superstitious people so I believed them and we went home. So, I don’t know what bad thing would have happened, but I did not see the biggest Voodoo festival in the world because of God's protection, I guess.

I finally got to come to Finagnon on Thursday and meet my new apartment and new elders inside. There is Elder Tolman, a missionary form Utah, who has been out about a month and a half on his mission. He is still in training and his trainer is Elder Kahombe, another Congolese who wants to learn English. So, I speak English to the guy who speaks French and I speak French to Tolman, the American who speaks English. A little backwards maybe, but it works.

The apartment is fantastic here. Nice size, nice location, biggest bathroom I’ve had on my mission, everything I need. A bread lady stopes by every morning with french bread but speaks no French. We told her to wait we would grab money come back and buy. When we went into the apartment to grab money, she had already left. She must have thought we said go away.

Because neither of us know anything we are kinda finding our own way through the sector because there are no addresses. The elders before us left a list of where the people live on a piece of paper and showed Elder Tolman the places and Elder Tolman showed us, it was funny.

Then the biggest blessing, my first companion came back and became my eleventh companion. Segal and I being back together in this big apartment with a nice sector and no worries makes me wonder what happened to the Benin Cotonou mission. This mission is supposed to be hard all the time but no, this is great. Segal and I get along great. We have had different mission experiences, but we have done good work. He has done all his time in Togo. I’ve done most in Benin and I’m showing him around. Just the fact I’ve spent over a year of my life in Benin I’ve picked up some of their languages and stuff, it’s really cool to see. Things seem to be going up. The zone we have seems good I’m really happy after much suffering. I think some blessings have come, the church is true.

With Segal